Whatever Helena was hiding, I don't think it's going to stay hidden much longer.
2
STELLAN
She stands in my Great Hall like she's calculating how many of my wolves she could kill before they brought her down. The answer is three. Maybe four, if she's as good as her grandmother trained her to be. I've been watching long enough to know she might be better.
Iris Carswell walks toward my throne with her spine straight and her chin lifted, and every wolf in the corridor goes still. They sense it too, even if they don't understand what they're sensing. She doesn't fit the human template they expect. She calls to the predator in all of us, whispering prey and protect in the same breath.
Her scent reaches me before she's halfway across the hall, and my hands tighten on the arms of my throne.
It has changed.
Six months ago, my sources in Portland sent their final confirmation. Iris Carswell, twenty-four years old, living in a modest apartment near the university where she worked as a research assistant. Taking her vitamins every morning like clockwork. Training three times a week at a combat gym that catered to humans who wanted to feel dangerous. Smellingof lavender soap and the chemical mask of whatever Helena Carswell had been feeding her since puberty.
That chemical mask is failing now. Beneath the familiar lavender, beneath the astringent tang of suppressants working overtime, a sweetness bleeds through. Richer. Headier. The scent curls into my lungs and spreads through my bloodstream like wildfire, and my wolf surges against the cage I've built for him while we waited.
Omega.
The word reverberates through my bones. My wolf has known since the first photograph crossed my desk, since I looked into those dark eyes and felt recognition slam through me like a physical blow. The human part of my brain required more evidence. Blood samples obtained through creative means. Medical records that shouldn't have been accessible. Helena Carswell's private journals, recovered after her death and decoded by specialists who still don't know what they translated.
The evidence is irrefutable. Iris is the first omega born to the Carswell bloodline in six generations, a genetic throwback to the gift her ancestor burned out of himself on a frozen battlefield. She doesn't know what she is. Helena made sure of that, burying the truth beneath vitamins and careful lies, hoping the suppressants would hold long enough for something to change.
Nothing changed. The blood pact came due, and I collected what was owed.
Now she stands at the base of my dais, meeting my eyes with a fire that makes my blood sing, and the suppressants are failing, and she has no idea that every wolf in this fortress is about to know exactly what walks among them.
Getting her alone is the priority. The suppressants are failing, and I need to know how much time remains before the change becomes obvious to every nose in this territory. My control depends on it.
Years of practice and wanting what I couldn't touch while the pact remained dormant and Helena Carswell stood between us.
The waiting ends tonight.
The formal presentation takes place at sundown, in the same Great Hall where I first watched her walk toward me like a warrior approaching execution. The space has been transformed for the occasion. Torches blaze in every sconce, casting the wolf carvings into sharp relief. My pack fills the hall in ranked order, senior warriors and the oldest families in the front rows, household staff behind them, the unmated wolves filling the spaces between. Nearly two hundred shifters have gathered to witness the activation of a blood pact that predates any of us still living.
Iris stands beside me on the dais, close enough that her scent fills my lungs with each breath. She wears a dress that someone from my household staff selected, deep green velvet that hugs her curves and leaves her shoulders bare. The color brings out the warmth in her ivory skin and makes her dark eyes look almost black. She looks like a queen, and she holds herself like a prisoner facing execution.
Good. Let her hate me. Hatred is easier to transform than indifference.
"The blood pact between the Northern Pack and the Carswell bloodline has been dormant for centuries," I announce, my voice carrying to the far corners of the hall. "Tonight, it wakes. Tonight, the debt is paid."
Murmurs ripple through the crowd. My wolves know the history. They know what Tobias Carswell sacrificed to save our ancestors from the Holloway Coven. They also know thathumans have no place in pack hierarchy, that bringing one into my household weakens the bloodline rather than strengthening it.
At least, that's what the traditionalists believe.
I catch movement in my peripheral vision and identify the source without turning my head. Daven, one of the pack's most prominent elders, stands near the front of the assembly, his silver hair gleaming in the torchlight, his expression carefully neutral. He leads the faction that opposed this arrangement from the moment I announced my intention to invoke the pact. A human bride for the alpha of the Northern Pack. An insult to tradition. A sign of weakness.
Daven doesn't know what Iris is. None of them do, not yet. When the truth emerges, when her omega nature breaks through the failing suppressants and announces itself to every nose in the territory, the political calculation will change. Omegas are rare. Omegas are treasured. An omega, even a human-born one, changes everything.
Until then, I will deal with dissent the way I always have. Decisively.
"Iris Carswell," I continue, turning to face her. "Do you acknowledge the blood pact agreed to by your ancestor Tobias Carswell?"
Her jaw tightens. For a moment, I think she might refuse to speak, might force me to demonstrate exactly what happens when the pact is denied. Then her voice cuts through the silence, clear and cold.
"I acknowledge it."
"Do you accept the terms of the pact, binding yourself to the Varen pack through marriage alliance, forsaking all prior claims and commitments?"
